The longest word in english language.

The word Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is officially the longest word in English language. It means “a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, mostly found in volcanos”.

So let’s break it down to understand it better:

  • pneumono = related to lungs (Latin, from Greek)
  • ultra = beyond (Latin, as in “ultraviolet”)
  • microscopic = extremely small (Latin/Old English, from Greek mikron, small, and skopos, view)
  • silico = silica (Latin)
  • volcano = volcano (Latin)
  • coni = related to dust (Greek: konis, dust)
  • osis = disease / condition (Greek)

It is cool to know about the longest word in english. But can you pronounce this 45-letter word in a single breath? 🙂

17 Comments

  1. Shobhit…..

    Great stuff here, enjoyed reading everything, especially pigeonrank thing.

    Keep it up!

  2. lisa lollaine soram

    this was amazing.i cannot pronounce it without having a breath.

  3. geraldine laurel

    i don’t believe that can find this kind of long word.

  4. tigeriris

    that is a sweet word, fun ot say and easy to spell!

  5. Please Send Me the Longest Word in Sinhala Language to E-mail address that I havea above Mentioned

  6. Sada Hashmi

    Yes! I can prononce this 45-letter word in a single breath… Its really fun… WOW

  7. nunya

    That is not the longest word ever recorded though. This word is 207,000 letters long and has only been printed once. It is another word forhuman mitochondrial DNA.

  8. @nunya: Any DNA structure is not an ‘English’ language world. That is why it is not included in my blog post. 🙂

  9. that is untrue.
    the longest word in the english language is 1909 characters long and is referring to a specific part of DNA.

  10. jennie lin

    This is hard! I can’t even pronounce this word……think about having to say it all in one breathe! Awesome!

    – Jennie Lin

  11. feny

    That is the only longest word I ever heard.I don’t believe that it has a word like this.
    WOW!!!! It is so NICE.

  12. Shobhit great job done by u.
    ur way of simplification which help us to pronounce it is also so nice.

  13. kema

    that was my spelling word for 4th grade I got a cirtificate and everything for it. I can still spell it to this day and im in college now

  14. emily

    I could easily. If you put it down in those parts it makes it waay easier. Now I get to show off to my friends! Well, if I remember it. I’m going to try to pronounce a waaaay longer word with 1, 185 letters, but for now I’ll stick to this word to get used to long words. Thanks a lot!

  15. §arah

    Good stuff. Just learnt the longest word in english. Wow like it 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *